Discussions about prison reform usually center on improvements and policy changes to enhance the lives and wellbeing of the incarcerated.

It’s about time prison reform focused on corrections officers, especially on ways to keep them safe on the job.

As the Herald reported,  dozens of “homemade sharpened weapons” were reportedly found inside the maximum security Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center maximum security prison last month. This comes on the heels of a prison guard being exposed to a synthetic cannabinoid and knocked unconscious, needing to be hospitalized.

In 2022, an inmate at MCI-Shirley was charged with severely beating corrections officer Matthew Tidman. These are far from isolated incidents.

A March NBC10 report found that there have been 711 cases of inmate assaults on staff in state prisons from 2020 to 2023 – 25 with serious injuries, according to Department of Corrections data. Most assaults happened inside the state’s most secure prison, Souza Baranowski Correctional Center.

Kevin Flanagan, legislative representative for the Massachusetts Correction Officers Federated Union said, “The uptick in violence has just gone beyond anything we’ve seen before. Officers are continuously getting assaulted with bodily fluid and getting punched and kicked and the constant mental and verbal attacks on our staff.”

None of this should be tolerated.

Exposure to synthetic drugs is the latest danger facing corrections officers on the job. Naturally, the officers union has been sounding the alarm on these and other dangers.

“Someone is going to get hurt,” Dennis Martin, the president of MCOFU, told the Herald. “It’s a scary time we’re in now.”

What’s needed is for the right people to hear the alarm and do something about it.

Martin has urged the DOC to implement an “exposure policy” for when officers are exposed to synthetic drugs, and lawmakers expressed their concerns in a letter to DOC Commissioner Shawn Jenkins.

Certainly there needs to be policy on how to deal with toxic exposure and ensuring the prisons are equipped to handle these incidents, but some solutions require muscle.

The legislators suggested regular facility shake-downs, increased searches, and more regular use of canines that can detect drugs.

Yes to all of this. Inmates may not like increased shake-downs, more frequent searches, and drug-sniffing dogs on sight. There may even be pushback. But 711 assaults on prison staff in three years is unacceptable.

When an excessive amount of weapons are found, there needs to be a “restart” with a thorough search across the prison, Martin said. Prisoners are innovative — the weapons found at Souza Baranowski were “homemade.”

Advocates for the incarcerated work to ensure prisoners’ basic rights are maintained, but those who work in prisons have the right to do their jobs without fear of being attacked with a makeshift knife, coming in contact with a synthetic drug, or being assaulted with free weights from the prison gym.

That’s what happened to corrections officer Tidman, and after his assault, the DOC, the Department of Corrections issued a temporary ban on free weights in their facilities. State Rep. Steven Xiarhos, of Barnstable filed bill HB 2422, which would make that ban permanent.

Searches, shakedowns, dogs, and banning free weights – whatever it takes to keep those who work in the state’s correctional facilities safe.

Editorial cartoon by Chip Bok (Creators Syndicate)